Professionals engaged in The Service for Protection from Gender-based Violence of IZ KRUGA VOJVODINA provided 269 specialized consultant services in total for 72 women with and without disabilities in the first semester of 2023. Women exposed to violence most often addressed the service themselves (88%), and less their family members did that for them (12%).
The specialized consultant support services included empowerment services (44,61%), services of referral to other institutions, offices, and services (37,17%), and information services (18,22%).
Most services provided to women without disabilities were empowerment services (48,18%), and, approximately the same percentage, referral services (26,36%) and information services (25,45%). Women with disabilities, on the other hand, received the most referral services (44,65%), followed by nearly the same proportion of empowerment services (42,14%) and the least, information services (13,21%).
Services were provided orally or in written form via different channels: mostly by phone conversations via mobile networks (52,04%), than by phone conversations via landline (21,19%), conversation using Viber app (10,41%), in-person conversation (7,43%), e-mail correspondence (3,34%), texting using Viber app (2,97%), Facebook Messenger (1,86%), and SMS wia mobile network (0,74%).
Women with disabilities mostly asked for and received services in conversations via mobile phone networks (62,26%), while women without disabilities asked for and received services in conversations via landline phones (43,45%) and mobile phone networks (37,27%).
Women exposed to violence that received support in the first semester of 2023 were exposed to different types of violence: physical, economic, sexual, psychological, stalking, digital and peer violence, and mobbing.
Women with disabilities who addressed IZ KRUGA VOJVODINA in the first semester of 2023 reported psychological (71,93%), economic (14,04%), sexual (8,77%), and physical violence (5,26%). Women without disabilities likewise mainly reported psychological violence (40%), but in a much higher number, they reported physical violence (24%), economic (12%) and stalking (10%), and in less percentage other types of violence: digital violence (4%), mobbing (4%), peer-to-peer violence (4%) and sexual violence (2%).
Women who got help during the first semester of 2023 experienced violence from various perpetrators: husband/partner, ex-husband/partner, father, son, brother, mother, children, parents, mother-in-law, father-in-law, son-in-law, daughter, grandson, neighbor, boss, nurse, peers. Most often, the perpetrator of violence was an ex-husband/partner (29%), followed by a current husband/partner (22,43%), then mother (12,15%), neighbor (6,54%), and daughter (5,61%).
If we look separately at the group of women with and without disabilities, we can note that perpetrators of violence against women with disabilities had to the highest degree, been ex-husbands/partners (35,09%), mothers (21,05%) and current husbands/partners (19,30%). While the perpetrators of violence against women without disabilities are in the largest percentage current husbands/partners (26%), ex-husbands/partners (24%), neighbors (14%) and daughters (12%).
In the first half of 2023, services were provided to 72 women in total (60% with disabilities and 40% without disabilities). The highest number of women with disabilities who received services during the first half of 2023 have sensory disabilities (39.39%), followed by physical disabilities (36.36%), chronic diseases (15.15%), and a smaller number with mental disabilities (6.06%) and rare disease (3.03%).
The women who received the service are from different places, of various ages, work, and marital status, with and without children. Nearly half of the women who received specialized consulting support services during the first half of 2023 are from Novi Sad (50.91%), and the rest of the calls are from different places in Serbia (49.09).
The work of the Service for protection against gender-based violence of IZ KRUGA VOJVODINA in the first half of 2023 was supported by the Dutch foundation Mama Cash, the domestic foundation Reconstruction Women’s Fund, and the OPENS Youth Center.
